


I Rose Above

by phyripo



Series: bingo! [2]
Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Alternate Universe - Supernatural (TV) Fusion, Canon-Typical Violence, Happy Ending, M/M, Minor Character Death, for Supernatural that is
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-17
Updated: 2019-01-17
Packaged: 2019-10-10 23:50:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,897
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17435843
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phyripo/pseuds/phyripo
Summary: Dragos and Luca Bălan know everything there is to know about the supernatural, and how to protect people from it, or so they think. They're proven wrong when they meet an angel, who claims Heaven has grand plans for the brothers, and Dragos in particular.Problem is, no one really knows what the plans are, and even the angel starts to have doubts as he gets to know Dragos better.





	I Rose Above

**Author's Note:**

> I started writing this in hopes of finishing it quickly, thinking it would be something short and that it would hopefully break the writer's block I was stuck with AND I GUESS IT WORKED because it's... Much longer than I anticipated but was finished in like three days.
> 
> For the square 'alternate universe: supernatural' on my RoBul bingo card, which I as a former Supernatural fan had to make into a fusion, of course! No knowledge of the TV series is required. I think I subconsciously made up for the show's treatment of women by putting a lot of women in important minor roles... Title of course from Carry on Wayward Son by Kansas! Thanks Supernatural for introducing me to Kansas, now one of my favorite bands. 
> 
> FEATURING  
> Romania - Dragos  
> Moldova - Luca  
> Bulgaria - Stefan  
> Czechia - Kveta  
> Hungary - Erzsébet  
> Denmark - Søren  
> Ukraine - Iryna  
> Belarus - Nadzeya  
> Russia - Ivan  
> Estonia - Eduard  
> Finland - Tuomi  
> Norway - Einar  
> Turkey - Sadık

The Bălan brothers grow up haunted.

Dragos has memories of being part of a happy family, but he isn’t sure how many of them are real and how many he has fabricated over the years. His younger brother Luca has none of his own.

Their father dies when Dragos is six. Luca is one. Neither of them speaks a word for months and months after the fire destroys their home, and their mother, Crina, loses herself in grief. People look at the brothers with pity, but Dragos hears them whisper behind their backs sometimes.

_Did you hear about Bălan? They say his wife started the fire. They say his son did. They say he was involved in some shady things._

So they move out of town, and one day, Crina Bălan disappears. Dragos and Luca are left alone in their apartment, ten and five years old, alone with their mother’s newspaper clippings about their father and her frantic notes plastering the walls, the conspiracies she saw everywhere, and the distant ghost of her affection.

Even at ten, Dragos has the presence of mind to rip the paper off the wall and hide it before he goes to find someone who can help.

With no further family, both of them end up staying at a children’s home, where Dragos sorts through his mother’s desperate research and starts his own.

 

 

He’s still not prepared when a fire steals that home away, as well.

 

 

At the new home, Luca is the one who puts it together. He’s twelve, cheerful despite everything, and _feels_ more than _knows_ , he says, that something is wrong around here.

When Dragos sneaks into the woods surrounding the building one evening to smoke secretly, his little brother sees the danger where he refuses to, and acts on it, recklessly jumping out from the shadow at the other shadow, the looming one behind Dragos.

The thing they subdue, with pocket knives and fire and kicks so hard they crunch sickeningly, isn’t human, nor is it an animal either of them has ever seen before. Dragos feels sick. He is grounded when the supervisors find him burning the thing, but that’s alright. It’s safe out there now. He just had to be sure.

 

 

“You’re not the only one who can do research,” Luca says, shaken but smiling, and shows Dragos his own. It seems they’ve inadvertently solved the mysterious disappearances of three townspeople. Still, he can’t help but think, _what if we could have saved them_?

 

 

Dragos isn’t particularly good at school, so he skips out on pursuing higher education and gets a job in town when he turns eighteen and has to leave the home. He gets an apartment, too, about the size of a shoebox, and dedicates one room—well, supply closet—to newspaper clippings, eyewitness reports and everything else he can get his hands on that feels relevant.

Just like his mother.

He understands now, really. At least some of it. It’s impossible to let go now that he _knows_. He knows there’s more between Heaven and earth than he thought. More evil. More to his father’s death, to his mother’s disappearance.

Now that he knows, he has to dig deeper.

 

 

At barely nineteen, on a cold January day, Dragos goes to investigate something for the first time. Deaths over in a town at the foot of the mountains, officially caused by attacks from feral dogs, but since when do dogs only appear on full moons?

There is an agent there, some official-looking woman in a suit, but she can’t be more than three years older than Dragos and asks the local police the strangest questions, about cold spots and people behaving oddly, and her partner has a classic car that doesn’t seem like something any government agency would let their agents drive on the job.

Besides, the first one, with the short brown hair, says their names are Lacoste and Klein, and even he knows those both happen to be fashion designers, even if the local cop doesn’t.

He follows the women around town until he suddenly loses sight of them, and then he’s slammed into a wall as he rounds the corner by the one who was driving the car, whose arms are done up with full-color tattoos, and that all sounds much sexier in his teenage mind than it really is. The other one has a knife, a huge one, and Dragos guesses he’s been busted.

 

 

He’s not so much _busted_ as falsely accused, of being a _werewolf_.

If his years in the home have taught him anything, it’s talking himself out of sticky situations, so he convinces the women, eventually, to teach him what they know. The one with the short hair, whose name is not Lacoste but Kveta, seems bemused. The one with the tattoos, Erzsébet, mostly seems annoyed.

He’ll take it.

 

 

After they track down the actual werewolf and are waiting outside for Erzsébet to check it out, Kveta gives him a bunch of phone numbers and addresses, for ‘if he ever needs help’. She presses her lips together when a shot rings out from the very normal house behind them. Shakes her head.

Erzsébet comes outside with a solemn expression.

“He agreed he was dangerous. I didn’t have to do it,” she says. And, to Dragos, “Look, I probably can’t talk you out of pursuing this, but it _isn’t_ fun.”

He understands that, but, “My life so far has kinda been a pile of misery anyway.”

“I hope we don’t see you again,” she says, eyebrows jumping, and that’s it.

 

 

Despite Dragos’s best efforts, Luca finds out what he’s up to, and he wants in.

But Luca is fifteen and wickedly smart and wants to study classical languages at some fancy university after high school, and Dragos isn’t going to take that away from his brother. The kid is the only thing left of a life Before, and he deserves to stay there.

 

 

Dragos quits his job, terminates the rent on his apartment, and leaves town after writing a letter to Luca.

All he’s got now is a shitty old Dacia, his laptop, a bunch of research, and a list of addresses.

“I’m sorry, Luca,” he tells the mountains as he drives into them.

 

 

There is no sign that his little brother is coming after him.

 

 

One of the addresses is a bar that is apparently frequented by hunters of the supernatural.

Erzsébet and Kveta aren’t there, but there are plenty of other people for Dragos to talk to, hardened men and women of all ages, all with one thing in common; they have lost someone to a monster.

A husband who saw his wife killed by a vampire, a daughter whose parents were taken by ghouls, two best friends who lost their third to the claws of some pagan god or another. They’re draped in protective charms or have tattoos hidden under plaid and jeans worn like a uniform.

 _I can do this_ , Dragos thinks. _I can protect people, save people. I can avenge my parents_.

 

 

He learns. Tags along with more seasoned hunters at first, digs graves and fashions wooden stakes and sharpens machetes for them, then starts finding his own cases and asking other loners at the bar to team up—because he knows he’s good at this, has got a knack for the harsh life of fighting in the dark and hiding from the law, living out of the back of his Dacia, but he recognizes all the same that two are stronger than one, thus safer.

He misses Luca like a phantom limb, but is convinced it’s better like this. He watches from afar, follows his presence on the internet as his little brother graduates from high school and indeed goes for the classical languages study at university. He seems happy.

 

 

After four years, someone says he looks familiar. An older hunter at the bar, with big hands and a handsome face.

“Yeah?” Dragos asks distractedly, looking up from his laptop. There might be a poltergeist in a school in Goldcrest.

The man is squinting over sunglasses, and Dragos looks back, hoping that the guy isn’t someone he’s hooked up with because he quickly made it a rule not to do that with other hunters, and he must be, what, in his late forties? That’s a little old even for him.

“Yeah,” the man says. He takes his sunglasses off. His eyes are sharp, and dark. “Your name Rotaru?”

Dragos’s breath hitches, and he slams his laptop shut.

“No, it isn’t. Why?” he asks. The man raises his dark eyebrows.

“You remind me of someone.” He gestures vaguely at his own face, which Dragos takes to mean his face looks similar to someone else’s.

There are two options, and he’s not sure which is worse. Luca, or his mother. Rotaru is her maiden name, and he wouldn’t put it past Luca to use it, but if it’s her, then… Then she abandoned them for some reason. Then she left them, like—like Dragos left Luca. _Fuck_.

“Of who do I remind you?”

“A hunter, too. A woman, down by Retea last I saw ‘er. The face is… Similar. You know ‘er?”

Dragos excuses himself and gets into his car, where he yells wordlessly into the evening until his voice is hoarse, and then notices there are tears running down his face.

He has to get back.

 

 

When he sees Erzsébet’s flashy car parked outside his brother’s dorm room, Dragos realizes there’s even more going on here.

 

 

“What, you didn’t _really_ think I’d let it go, did you?” Luca asks. “That I’d let _you_ go?”

“I’d hoped so,” Dragos confesses, the tears again in his eyes, but Erzsébet apparently has no sense of privacy and is still standing right there, so he doesn’t want to shed them.

“You idiot,” Luca says, and he’s twenty now, has lip piercings and hair that’s way too long and is taller than Dragos _for some fucking reason_ , but he’s still his little brother.

“I wanted to protect you, Luc.”

“I know. I understand. I was pissed about it but I understand. That’s why I didn’t come after you. But it _hurt_ , Dragos.” He swallows. “Have you ever thought that maybe I want to protect you too? You’re all I have left.”

His eyes, as always, remind Dragos of their mother’s, slate grey and wide, and the emotions accompanying the memory of her aren’t dulled anymore now, they’re sharp and biting like vampire teeth. Anger and sadness are at the forefront, as ever, but there’s a bit more anger now.

“I might not be, actually.”

 

 

Luca comes with him to Retea, a tiny coastal town with about five billion local legends about the lighthouse, which aren’t true because the lighthouse is perfectly normal as far as Dragos can tell.

Unsurprisingly, Luca’s theoretical knowledge of the supernatural is up to par with his own—maybe even better. Dragos resents Kveta and Erzsébet a little for helping him.

“Don’t blame them,” Luca says, standing on the cliffs and looking out over the turbulent waves, the water the same color as his eyes. His dark brown hair is flying everywhere even though he’s put half of it into a ponytail like Dragos tends to do with his own, much shorter hair. “They said I reminded them of you, so they knew I wouldn’t give it up and they might as well. Erzsébet doesn’t like you very much, does she?”

He’s insulted and proud at the same time.

 

 

They don’t find their mother in Retea, but she _has_ been there, for certain. There has been something not too long ago that they think was a wraith, but it seems gone now, and when they check in at the local police station, which has two whole officers to it, they’re immediately recognized as being related to ‘that agent that was here the other day’.

“We’re looking for her,” Luca says, looking every bit the concerned son Dragos isn’t sure he actually _is_. He’s not really sure why he wants to finds his mother, himself. Not out of concern, that much he knows. He just wants answers. _Needs_ answers, about everything.

 

 

They look through old news after the cop tells them nothing useful, and find a possible case their mother might have solved in the intermittent time period, because the murders are over now.

 

 

It goes like that for a while.

Sometimes, they solve their own cases. They’re a good team, which was to be expected. Luca doesn’t go back to school but he seems to have learned some pretty useful things already, things about obscure myths and all, which comes in handy when they run into a bunch of naiads in the mountains that are drowning tourists.

 

 

When they finally find Crina Bălan, or Rotaru, she’s nothing like Dragos remembers. She doesn’t seem happy to see them after so many years. She doesn’t seem sad either. She doesn’t seem much of anything, really, in relation to them or anything else. The only time she shows emotion is at the mention of her late husband.

“I’ve been trying to find what killed him,” she says, more to the wall of her motel room than either Dragos or Luca. They share a look.

“It won’t bring him back, I know,” she continues. Her voice has the same hoarse quality to it that Dragos’s always has, even now that he doesn’t smoke anymore. “I just want peace. In my mind. In my _life_.”

Luca clenches his jaw, stands up, and locks himself in the bathroom. The door slams behind him. Dragos sighs.

“Will that really work, mom? Will it really give you peace?”

Slate grey eyes, familiar but unfamiliar, lift to his face.

“I don’t know what I’d do if it didn’t.”

 

 

Despite all of it, they can’t quite bring themselves to let go of her again, so they go on together. The Bălans.

 

 

She feels like a stranger.

 

 

“Do you think she intends to die with the monster, when she finds it?” Luca asks from the passenger seat, watching their mother’s tail lights in front of them. Dragos tightens his fingers on the wheel. Luca sighs.

 

 

She does, and the brothers choose to believe—are sure—it is indeed intentional. Dragos is 26, Luca is 21, and they’re orphaned again.

 

 

“You could go back to school, you know,” Dragos tells his brother.

“So could you,” Luca replies, and that’s the end of that discussion.

They watch the smoke from their mother’s pyre drift to the sky. A hunter’s funeral, to make sure she doesn’t go ghost on them. Dragos thinks that he should feel sadder, but he’s lost her once before; she was virtually a stranger to him and Luca now. An angry, sad woman who will at least be at rest now, or so he hopes. He doesn’t really believe in Heaven, even though he remembers going to church with his parents before everything, but he hopes her soul is peaceful.

 

 

They hunt, build their place in the small community of that world. There are ghosts in the cities and nixies in the river and _fucking fairies_ in the mountains, after which Luca decides he needs a break because he just got _abducted_ by a woman the size of his hand and _Dragos, would you stop laughing_?

So Luca stays at the bar and helps the owner, Iryna, in return for a place to spend the night that isn’t a crappy motel like every other night.

Dragos runs into Kveta and Erzsébet and tags along with them.

“Just like old times,” he jokes, and he thinks he catches Erzsébet smiling. Huh, maybe he’s finally growing on her.

 

 

It’s the first time he deals with demons, and it’s the first time he fails, really fails, to save someone.

He’s pretty sure he’s cracked a rib, there are tears on his face and breathing is so much effort, but that doesn’t matter because Kveta is still, pale and broken next to Erzsébet’s car, and it’s his fault. He got distracted, couldn’t read the exorcism fast enough.

Erzsébet points a shaking gun at him with blood on her face and her eyes rimmed red.

“Don’t ever let me see you again,” she says, and Dragos can’t even blame her.

He gets into the Dacia and leaves, heading back for the bar.

 

 

Luca has to drag him away when he starts crying into his—how many is this?—glass of vodka.

He sits him gently on a bed in the back room, cleans his face and makes him drink water. He tugs his blood-spattered boots off, his ripped jeans and the uniform jacket he found at a thrift shop and has taken to wearing everywhere.

Dragos doesn’t remember falling asleep, but he must, because he dreams of the demons. They knew his name.

They knew Luca’s name.

 

 

There’s not even a cursory complaint when he spends the whole next day in bed.

 

 

“I know it ain’t healthy,” says the man sitting at the bar, “but the hunter way is just pickin’ up where ya left off and hopin’ it don’t get to ya.”

He’s smiling, but Dragos has always been good at reading people and sees something painful layered underneath the cheer.

 _It isn’t fun_ , he remembers Erzsébet saying, and the thought plagues him now. He pushes his dry, wispy hair out of his eyes and looks back at the man. He’s tall, with coppery hair, blue eyes, and freckles everywhere, and he’s turned attentively towards Dragos, their knees pressing together.

 _Well_ , he thinks, _why not_? It’s the best distraction he’ll get. He winks.

The man grins, genuine amusement layering itself over everything else, and raises his surprisingly dark eyebrows in return.

 

 

His name is Søren, he’s a great guy, and he dies just a month later of pure recklessness.

Dragos doesn’t get drunk again, because he gets the feeling that if he does, it’ll become a habit, and he sees that too often.

Besides, Iryna won’t even pour him so much now. He likes Iryna. She’s the matronly type, but will kick anyone’s ass.

 

 

He tries not to get attached to more people, but it’s difficult. All through his life, he’s always needed people—and so has Luca. They might be a great team, but spending 70 percent of your time stuck with your brother in a Dacia the size of a supply closet most likely isn’t anyone’s idea of fun.

So they build a little support network nonetheless.

Iryna, the bar owner, is the first one, and she introduces her two younger siblings, who are both hunters, though not together, Ivan and Nadzeya. Ivan helps at the bar sometimes, when he isn’t pummeling werewolves to death with his bare fists, or so Dragos assumes—the guy is huge—and Nadzeya reminds him of Kveta, although her tongue is even sharper and her skill with a knife is unparalleled.

Dragos suspects Luca still speaks with Erzsébet, but decides not to ask.

With Iryna also comes Eduard, who moves into the backroom of the bar at a certain point. He isn’t technically a hunter, but helps everyone who asks for it out by pretending to be their superior from one agency or another when a local cop gets suspicious and calls them up, by making and printing fake IDs and badges, and generally being tech support. He’s smart, his eyes always sharp behind his glasses, and Dragos is glad he’s on their side.

Eduard, for his part, brings in his half-brother Tuomi, who left the life a while ago, but returns quickly after hearing about Søren, with whom he apparently shared a burden of grief. The man is amazing with a shotgun and drinks far too much, but Dragos isn’t here to judge.

 

 

All in all, it gets easier, and they do a lot of good.

 

 

Everything turns very complicated, very fast, when the angels get involved.

 

 

It goes like this.

At 28, Dragos dies.

It’s demons, of course, because when is anything ever not terrible when demons are involved? He got a protective tattoo against being possessed and made Luca get one too, but they can still taunt him from another possessed person, speaking with their mouth and flicking their fingers to fling him around, to press him to the ground.

The lead demon is saying something that clicks in Dragos’s mind, something about fires, but it never really comes through because in the next moment, there’s a blinding pain like being ripped apart at the seams, like everything bursting into agonizing fire from the inside, like squeezing and pulling and tearing at his guts.

And then there’s darkness, stretching to infinity.

 

 

And then there’s more darkness, but this time, it’s claustrophobic. It’s damp and muffled and Dragos wants _out_ , he _wants out_.

 

 

He literally claws his way to the surface, breaking his fingernails on wood and dirt, trying to breathe through the panic, the darkness, until he reaches light.

 

 

He just crawled out of his own fucking grave. What the fuck.

 

 

With no better ideas and no clue how long it’s been, he makes his way to Iryna’s bar.

It’s gone. Burned to the ground like so much else in his life. If it was just the bar, alright, but he doesn’t know whether anyone burned with it, at least not until he finds a mangled pair of familiar glasses among the wreckage.

Only then does Dragos let himself break down and cry. He sleeps next to the ashes before making his way to Tuomi’s house, because it’s the only other place he can think of to look.

It’s a relief to see Erzsébet’s car of all things parked on the driveway now, let alone the Dacia.

 

 

“Luca, did you do this?” is the first thing Dragos says in his newfound life. He says he didn’t. Erzsébet leaves, which is fair. Kveta didn’t come back.

 

 

They can’t _bring_ her back, because no one has any idea how Dragos is alive again. It’s been seven months since the day—

“The day I died,” he says. The words feel strange in his mouth, because he’s alive. He doesn’t remember anything about those months he wasn’t, except for dreams of fire that he tries not to think about.

 

 

“Maybe it’s a dream,” Luca says. “Maybe this is another dream and I’ll wake up and you’ll be dead again.”

“I promise it isn’t,” Dragos replies, unsure of it himself. “I promise, Luc, I’ll be here tomorrow.”

 

 

He is still there in the morning, that’s true, and so is someone else. _Something_.

That someone is standing in the kitchen and looks like a perfectly ordinary man, showing no fear or much of anything in the face of Tuomi pointing a gun at him and Luca brandishing a knife.

He _looks_ perfectly ordinary, but he _feels_ , more than supernatural, preternatural, as if he should be brimming out of the room, out of the whole house, as if he could bring them all down with the snap of his fingers. Yet, he seems familiar as well.

The not-quite-a-man lifts too-vivid green eyes up to Dragos when he enters the kitchen, on guard.

“Hello, Dragos.”

Dragos drops to his knees. He isn’t in pain, not physically at least. There are flashes in his mind, though, fire and agony and a blinding, yet warm light through it all. Luca is at his side in an instant, catching his shoulders, but Dragos looks up at the intruder.

“Who are you?” he rasps. His head feels like it’s going to burst. What if he’s here to take him back? The man gazes down at him, green eyes and messy dark hair and _so much power_.

“My name is Stefan, and I’m an angel of the Lord.”

Tuomi scoffs. Stefan doesn’t look at him, but he tilts his head, and a lot happens at once.

The lights burst overhead, glasses shatter in the kitchen cupboards while doors fly off their hinges. Luca and Tuomi are covering their ears, ducking their heads away from Stefan yet uninjured by the debris, but Dragos watches while the man’s eyes light up and the shadows of magnificent wings stretch out over the cupboards and the ceiling.

“Why?” he whispers. By all accounts, it should have been inaudible to Stefan over the ruckus, had he been human, but he replies.

“Heaven has plans for you, Dragos Bălan.”

 

 

Truth be told, that’s more than a little unnerving.

 

 

No further explanation seems forthcoming, because _Stefan_ flits off quickly. Literally disappears into nothing between one moment and the next with a beat of invisible wings. Tuomi curses loudly.

“Look what that dick did to my kitchen!”

 

 

Since ‘Heaven has plans for you’ is about the least reassuring thing Dragos has heard in his life—either of his lives?—he and Luca quickly take to the road again. There are still regular monsters they have to try and get rid of, always people to save, and if Luca seems a little quieter, a little more ruthless in fights, well, that’s something Dragos prefers not to think about.

 

 

The second time he meets Stefan-the-angel, Dragos is bleeding out on the dirty floor of an old warehouse while his brother fights the djinn that had him captured, feeding off him while he dreamed up a perfect life.

“Try not to make this a habit, Dragos,” the angel says, sounding more annoyed than anything, before he presses two fingers to Dragos’s forehead, holding them like saints do in paintings, and the pain lifts. The angel’s eyes light up stark blue, nearly white, but then settle back into that unearthly green. Even in the dark, they’re visible.

Dragos sits up. He isn’t bleeding anymore. He opens his mouth, whether to thank Stefan or to question him about anything and everything, he isn’t sure, but there’s a flutter of wings, and he’s alone again.

 

 

They beat the djinn, narrowly. Stefan doesn’t show up while Dragos speeds to the hospital with Luca.

 

 

“Angels are assholes,” Dragos decides, sitting at his brother’s bedside with a cup of horrible coffee and the feeling he should get out of here as soon as Luca wakes, before anyone finds out who they really are. Hunting doesn’t exactly help one get in the law enforcement’s good graces. It’s all part of the life.

“Don’t I know it,” Luca mumbles from his bed, and Dragos could cry with relief.

 

 

The second angel they meet is named Mendrion, he’s Stefan’s superior, and he’s _way_ worse. Even Stefan seems uncomfortable while he hovers in the background as the other angel calls Luca an abomination with a look of unbridled disgust on his face, eyes constantly ablaze. He doesn’t seem to be making an effort to even appear human.

Dragos refuses to be impressed, but the fear coursing through his body is impossible to deny. This is something else. This isn’t a run-of-the-mill monster, and it’s the furthest thing from human, and _apparently_ , if what Mendrion says is true, everything in his life has been leading up to the point where a fucking angel of God pulled him out of Hell.

His father’s death, his mother’s disappearance orchestrated from somewhere beyond earth. Kveta and Søren and Eduard. All just tests, trials. And for what?

 

 

“It’s been written,” Stefan explains, narrowing those eyes.

“What has been fucking written?” Dragos snaps. He’s fully prepared for the angel to fly off, but he just tilts his head, blinking.

“You and your brother are part of something very big, Dragos.”

Dragos shakes his head. “What if we don’t want to be?”

He seems confused by that.

“Look, I was raised Catholic. If your Father—” Wow, that’s insane. “If your Father gave humans free will, He shouldn’t expect us to dance to His whims. Predestination is crap, Stefan.”

He disappears, and Dragos throws a knife into the motel wall.

 

 

Ivan and Iryna reach out to them because their sister is missing. She apparently hunted with Luca for a while, during Dragos’s… Absence.

“She’s surprisingly funny,” Luca says as they drive to the place where she was last seen. “And very good at what she does.”

 

 

Erzsébet is there as well, and she looks resigned in a way that doesn’t have to do with Dragos’s presence.

“I know Nadzeya,” she tells him, “and she’s… Since the bar burned down, and especially since you came back, she’s been different. I’m afraid she’s gonna do something stupid.”

“I’m sorry,” he replies, because he’s getting the feeling this is all his fault.

Erzsébet looks up at him. He notices for the first time in all these years that her eyes are green, but they’re tired and nowhere near as vivid as Stefan’s. She pulls her mouth into an unimpressed grimace.

“Don’t give yourself too much credit, Bălan. There’s a lot more going on here than either of us knows.”

Luca pokes his head out of the car window.

“Are you two done flirting or do I have to wait—”

“Gross!” Erzsébet shouts, and Dragos has to smile at that little bit of normalcy.

 

 

When they find Nadzeya, it’s the middle of the night and she’s at a crossroads. Every hunter knows what that means.

“Fuck!” Erzsébet yells, and runs towards Nadzeya, whose pale face and hair seem to glow in the moonlight while she chants in Latin, never faltering even though she has clearly noticed them.

It takes all three of them to get her to stop summoning a crossroads demon, with Luca clasping his hands over her mouth and Dragos and Erzsébet dragging her away from the road and into Erzsébet’s car.

 

 

She doesn’t move from the motel bed they deposit her on except to use the bathroom for two days. Dragos doesn’t know her well at all but is worried about her, so he can only imagine what Erzsébet and Luca must be thinking.

“Your siblings are on the way,” he tells Nadzeya, who makes a low, disgruntled sound in response. “What were you trying to _do_?”

For the first time, she really looks at him, from behind a tangle of pale blonde hair, her blue eyes dark.

“Why would you come back and not anyone else?” she asks him. “Why _you_ and not—”

“Kveta?” he asks, and she huffs.

“Eduard.”

That’s a bit of a surprise, to be honest. He didn’t know they got along at all.

“You know demons hardly ever do that. Bring someone back to life.” And if they had, if she’d made a deal on that crossroads, then Nadzeya’s soul would have been ripped from life because that’s what demons do, Dragos would know. She probably wouldn’t even have gotten to live out the customary ten years before being condemned to an eternity in Hell. “Is Eduard really worth that?”

“You have no idea,” she spits.

And then Stefan is there in all his scruffy glory, wearing the same green coat, black turtleneck and worn-out jeans as always, and Dragos wonders again if he’s possessing some guy or if that’s not something angels do. It doesn’t seem very holy.

“I pulled Dragos out of Hell on orders from Heaven,” he tells Nadzeya.

“Now’s not the time,” Dragos tries to say, but Nadzeya is laughing, a little hysterically.

“This guy? I don’t know what Heaven is up to, but it can’t be much if he’s involved.”

“Rude,” Dragos mumbles, but then he’s busy tugging the angel back when he rounds on her. He runs hot under his fingers.

“Leave it, Stefan.”

“The Bălans are destined for great things, Nadzeya Alyakhnovich. Who are you to question the word of God?”

“An atheist,” she replies.

Dragos tugs Stefan outside.

“She’s right, though,” he says. Stefan watches intently while he digs up some change for the vending machine in the parking lot. “I’m just me. Why am I so important to Heaven? I mean, hey, I’m a decent hunter, and I guess I know some good card tricks, but—”

“It’s been written,” Stefan says, somewhat feebly.

“So you keep saying. Do you have any idea _what’s_ been written?” He breaks off a piece of his candy bar and holds it out to Stefan like he would to Luca, who has always loved everything sweet.

The angel narrows his eyes at it before taking it gingerly.

“You can eat that, you know.” Dragos is a little endeared despite himself.

“Thank you, Dragos,” Stefan says solemnly, taking a bite of the chocolate. “I don’t know exactly what has been written. I’m a soldier, not a scribe. But I know you and your brother have a part to play in something big that could be coming soon. Something between Heaven and Hell.”

Dragos opens his mouth to ask about five hundred follow-up questions, but Erzsébet’s car rumbles into the parking lot, interrupting him. Stefan blinks at it, shoves the rest of the candy bar into his mouth, and disappears.

“Good talk,” Dragos says into the empty spaces he leaves behind. “Very informative.”

 

 

Nadzeya and Erzsébet take off together, and Dragos really hopes they won’t do anything dumb.

 

 

He’s worried about Luca.

Well, honestly, he’s almost always worried about Luca, has always been worried about him in some capacity, but it’s something more acute now. His brother is withdrawing, the way he did after their father died, after their mother disappeared.

He’s 25 now, but reminds Dragos so strongly of that little boy that he wants to tuck him in, run his fingers through that ridiculously long hair of his, and tell him it will all be fine, he’s here.

Instead, he watches him get ever more reckless on hunts, going in alone and unarmed, glowering at victims and witnesses and snapping at the local police.

 _Let me be able to do something about this_ , he thinks.

“It is necessary,” says Stefan, from behind him at the bar where he’s sitting. Dragos very nearly falls off his stool.

“Jesus Christ, you fucking walnut! Warn a man.”

“I am not a wal—”

“Yeah, no shit.” He runs his hands over his face. “What are you doing here? And what are you talking about?”

In the low light, it’s difficult to read the angel’s already minimal facial expressions. He tilts his head.

“You sounded distressed.”

“I sounded— Are you reading my mind?”

“No. Yes. Sometimes. You were praying, technically.”

Despite himself, Dragos has to laugh. Something like fondness blooms in his chest.

“Alright, great, but don’t just…” Here, he makes a fluttering motion with one hand, which Stefan watches with interest and some amount of confusion. “Don’t just pop up. Most people aren’t really gonna react favorably to a guy just appearing.”

At that, he receives the most human, most unimpressed look he’s ever seen from the angel, as if to say, _I’m not an idiot, thank you very much_ , and he laughs again, cherishing the lightness in his chest.

“Come on, then, have a drink.”

Dragos has a drink with an angel. Life is _strange_.

 

 

Luca doesn’t want to talk to the angel.

 

 

A week later, Luca disappears.

 

 

“If you say it’s been fucking written _one more time_ —”

Stefan just stares at him from where he’s been standing in the corner of the motel room for hours now.

“I don’t care what’s been written, all I know is that there’s a vengeful spirit on the loose and my brother is gone and _would you sit down_? You’re freaking me out, Stef.”

Already halfway to the rickety chair by the window, Stefan halts.

“ _Stef_?”

“Stefan is a stupid name for an angel!”

“My true name is impossible for human vocal chords to produce,” he says calmly, sitting down. “Your brother will return, Dragos. I assure you.”

It doesn’t help. He keeps pacing.

“In the meantime,” Stefan continues, “we should do something about the spirit you’re hunting.”

 

 

Turns out having an angel for a hunting partner is pretty damn useful—and Dragos would be lying if he said it isn’t kind of hot how he just vanishes the ghost in a blast of Heavenly light by simply touching it.

 

 

There are demons in the next town over, and the man who first told Dragos about his mother has barricaded himself in his house just outside of it. He’s supposed to be retired, he grumbles over the phone, and can they please come and deal with this?

 

 

Because Dragos’s life is just a giant clusterfuck, the demons have his brother.

 

 

He needs all the help he can get on this, so he calls Nadzeya and Erzsébet in, as well as Tuomi, who brings a guy named Einar with some vague relation to Søren.

They do speed exorcisms, but not speedy enough by far, there are so many fucking demons. During a lull, Dragos prays, for some approximation of it.

 “Stef, I know it’s probably busy in Heaven, whatever you do up there,” he starts, and Erzsébet gives him an incredulous look from where she’s sewing stitches into Tuomi’s arm, “but we need your help.”

Tuomi grunts, “Are you talking to the—”

“Hello, Dragos.” Stefan, now less than a step away from him, blinks. “Erzsébet, Tuomas.”

“What the fuck,” Einar says faintly from the doorway, dropping his carton of yoghurt.

 

 

Turns out angels love yoghurt. At least, Stefan does. Who knew?

 

 

Even if it’s not been written, the angel helps them. He’s got a special angel blade that can actually kill demons rather than exorcise them, that he gives to Nadzeya after witnessing her skill with knives, and then he just smites things left and right, lighting the whole town up in stark blue.

“That’s kinda hot, not gonna lie,” says Erzsébet, watching Stefan burn the hell out of the guard outside the town hall where the demons are congregating, his expression focused and intense. Dragos glares at her.

 

 

The demons don’t have Luca.

 

 

Luca has the demons.

 

 

“Don’t!” Dragos yells at Stefan when he charges at his little brother, but there’s nothing he can do when the angel slams his palm against his forehead, and Luca crashes to the ground.

Instantly, all the demons exit the people they were possessing in swirling clouds of black smoke, but Dragos barely notices, sprinting across the town hall to where the angel is crouched next to Luca.

“What did you do?” he yells. “Is he okay? Stefan—”

“Your brother is fine, Dragos. He’s just asleep.” Stefan looks up at him, then around at the hall, now full of dazed people and with walls covered in all manner of sigils and signs. Most of them are unfamiliar to Dragos. He pushes both hands into his sweaty hair. Kneels next to Luca’s prone form.

Like this, pale and still and gangly as ever, he looks incredibly young. A tear makes its way down Dragos’s cheek. Stefan stands.

“I disobeyed orders,” he says, faintly, casting his gaze upwards as if looking towards Heaven, then around at the walls again. “I shouldn’t have stopped him.”

 _I’m glad you did_ , Dragos thinks. He watches over Luca while the other hunters and the angel start putting things right in the town.

Stefan gently drapes that eternal coat around his shoulders. It smells like rain and ozone and something spicy like aftershave, and Dragos burrows into it.

 

 

He keeps the coat when Stefan is abruptly called back to Heaven not much later.

 

 

Because Dragos doesn’t want his brother waking up to a whole host of hunters staring at him, he shoos everyone out of the room where Sadık, the older hunter who called them in, is letting them stay. He pretends he hasn’t noticed the protective symbols all over that particular room, on the walls and the ceiling, or the demon trap underneath the bed.

“God, Luc, what did you do?” he whispers, gently running thin fingers through his dark hair. “I’m so sorry.”

 

 

It’s far too long before he wakes.

Stefan hasn’t shown, and Dragos has to admit that he worries about the angel who has become his friend, but he all but forgets when Luca opens his eyes one rainy afternoon, just days before his 26th birthday.

“Dra?” he croaks. Dragos grasps his hand.

“You’re awake.” He doesn’t know what to say.

“What’s—where are we?” His voice sounds raspy. Dragos may be sad and scared and confused, but he’s still the guy’s big brother, so he reaches for his glass of water and help Luca shakily lift it so he can drink.

“We’re in Sadık’s house. Near Mera.”

Luca blinks slowly. Takes a breath. He chews on his cracked lower lip where the piercings used to be, and when did he stop wearing those anyway?

Eventually, he looks up at Dragos, who tries not to let too much of the anger and hurt show on his face. He can’t imagine it works, because his brother winces.

“I’m sorry, Dra,” he breathes. “I can’t imagine what you must think of me.”

“I’m—” He closes his eyes against the sting behind them. Luca looks scared, of _him_ , and that’s the last thing he’s ever wanted. “I’m confused, Luc. Please, talk to me.”

 

 

It started when he was dead, and he can’t believe no one noticed. That _he_ didn’t notice. His little brother is in bounds with a demon.

“At first I didn’t even believe she was a demon,” Luca explains, so softly that Dragos can barely hear him, his knees huddled to his chest. “She was nice, you know? And I’d lost you and there was no one… No one else.”

Dragos takes a shaky breath. Tugs Stefan’s coat tighter around his shoulders. Had even the angel not noticed? Or was this also _written_?

“And when you came back… I tried to stop, but she’s teaching me things, Dragos. I can _do_ things, I can make demons do things, and—”

“At what cost, Luca?” he interrupts. Nothing demons do ever comes without a price. Luca looks down at his shaking hands.

“You were dead. My life wasn’t worth anything, and she couldn’t bring you back.”

He stands up, swears.

“You sold your soul? You sold your _fucking soul_ to a demon? After everything?”

“Not exactly,” Luca replies, wincing. “My soul is my own.”

“Then what?” His voice is on the verge of breaking, and Luca shakes his head mutely, tears streaking down his pale face. “Luca, please. I can’t lose you.”

He opens his mouth, and that’s the moment there is a crash downstairs, and then yelling, and with one last look at his brother, Dragos bolts.

 

 

It’s a mess. Sadık is badly hurt, but he’s behind the woman who has crashed through his window, and Erzsébet is shielding Einar from her while he searches through a drawer for something.

“Hello everyone,” the woman says amicably. She’s beautiful, if one discounts the blood on her green swing dress or the fact that her eyes don’t have normal pupils but are slitted like a snake’s. Einar swears quietly when he accidentally cuts his finger on a knife in the drawer.

The woman curls her perfectly painted red lips into an unpleasant facsimile of a smile, and throws the knife he has picked up out of his hand with a flick of her wrist.

“Such an honor to meet all of you,” she continues.

“What are you?” Tuomi snaps, training his rifle on her head. She tuts, looking for all the world like a preschool teacher… Covered in blood.

“That’s no way to speak to a lady. My name is Lehiel, although if you have heard of me, I suppose it would be by this one’s name.” She flicks her button nose—the nose of the person she’s possessing.

Sadık grunts in pain, and she frowns with irritation, snapping her fingers and quieting him, leaving him to choke silently.

Two things happen at once.

Behind Dragos, Luca stumbles into the room, gasping when he sees the woman, and in front of him, Stefan pops into existence, bloodied and stumbling, barely keeping upright. He whirls on the woman.

“Manon,” Luca says.

“Sister,” Stefan breathes.

She laughs hysterically, and the angel collapses.

 

 

It’s silent in the house.

Sadık is gone, given a hunter’s funeral in the field behind his house. Stefan is lying on the couch, looking far too human, and everyone else is sitting around doing research into the demon who vanished into nothing.

Lehiel. Luca hasn’t said anything.

 

 

Dragos drapes Stefan’s coat over the angel’s stomach.

“Sister,” he said. Dragos frowns and puts aside his tome about demons.

 _Please, Stefan_ , he thinks, _I need you to be alright. We need your help_.

 

 

When he finally falls asleep, he dreams. The angel is there. He’s _really_ there, Dragos can feel it.

“Stefan,” he breathes, and he surprises both of them by taking a step in his direction and pulling him into a hug. Slowly, he unwinds under his touch, even hugs back awkwardly. Here, he seems fine, the same as ever, green coat and all. Dragos holds the hug for too long, but he doesn’t think Stefan has a frame of reference anyway, so that’s alright. He’s warm in this place, too.

The space looks like the apartment Dragos lived in for those few years before he found out about… Everything. The angel looks around at the clippings on the walls, curiously. There are some newer ones there, cases that took place after Dragos let go of the place.

“You’ve saved many people.”

Dragos sighs, tugging at his earlobe. “I guess.”

Stefan trails bony fingers over pictures that weren’t in the real, much smaller, version of this room, of Luca as he is now, and Kveta and Tuomi and Stefan himself.

“You’re a good man, Dragos Bălan.”

“Don’t say that. I couldn’t even…”

Stefan is in front of him now, too close like he always is. Dragos has never really minded. He breathes him in, the scent familiar by now, the way it clings to his coat.

“I know you dislike it when I say this, and now I understand why, but—it has been written.”

Squaring his jaw, he looks away while Stefan continues.

“I defied orders for you, for Luca. Angels aren’t supposed to have free will, Dragos. We never take into account that humans do have that.”

“What are you saying, Stef?”

The angel’s eyes are bright in a very human way.

“I’m saying that all that has been written can be erased and re-written. It’s already been changed. By your love for Luca. By me, choosing a different path. Don’t let Lehiel put you back on the old track.”

Dragos is so tired of this. He wants to trust Stefan with this, he does, but how can he when he has no idea what he’s talking about? No clue what they’re up against?

“Dragos—”

“Tell me what we’re supposed to erase, Stefan! What the hell is it that has been written that lands my brother with a goddamn demon and half the people I care about dead? What kind of Heavenly plan—”

The room falls away around him, and he wakes with a start.

 

 

“I need to leave for a while. Watch over Luca,” he tells Erzsébet, who raises her eyebrows as if to say, _me_? He just shrugs.

 

 

Driving the Dacia into the mountains doesn’t help, even if he does kill some sort of fucking goblin that’s terrorizing a small town. Driving along the coast is not relaxing, and the lakes do nothing to ease Dragos’s whirling mind.

He used to love the lakes.

 

 

Erzsébet leaves voicemails.

“Stefan is still here,” she’ll say, and she sounds oddly fond if slightly exasperated. “Did you know he’s never seen a single movie in his life?”

And, “Luca locked himself in the panic room. Stefan says he’s alright, but I don’t know if I trust his definition of alright, ‘cause he let Nadzeya throw knives at him the other day.”

And, “Nadzeya and Einar found information about Lehiel. You should come back.”

 

 

Dragos prays.

“I’m sorry, Stef,” he says into the night, sitting cross-legged on the roof of his car and watching the half-moon reflect on the sea. He’s close to Mera, now. He’s been on his way back since he left. “I know I should be tearing up the script, not hiding. Humanity is messy.”

There’s no answer.

 

 

When he returns to Sadık’s house, everyone is there, and set to summon Lehiel and trap her so they can get some information.

“Wait,” Dragos says. He drags Stefan to the panic room were Luca supposedly still is. It’s a cell, underground, with iron walls and protective markings everywhere. If a hunter has a house, they’re bound to have a panic room, and Sadık was no exception.

Stefan opens the door in a flash of blue light, expression solemn, and they both see Luca scramble to the opposite wall when they step inside. Guess Sadık didn’t ward against angels. Dragos isn’t surprised; no one he’s met, himself included, actually believed they existed before all this.

“Dra,” Luca says, sounding scared, and Dragos hates that he makes his brother sound like that now. Luca could burn down the world and he wouldn’t hate him. “You’re back.”

“Yeah.” He takes a deep breath. “It doesn’t have to be like this, Luc. We can figure out how to fix this.”

“Manon said—or Lehiel, I guess. She said this is my destiny.”

Stefan shifts at Dragos’s side, close enough that his knuckles brush Dragos’s.

“I’ve been… Researching. I’m not very welcome in Heaven right now, but there are a few angels from my garrison who are on my side, and I’ve found out what it is you have been fated to do.”

“Something tells me I’m not gonna like this,” Dragos mumbles.

“Lehiel is a fallen angel, Luca. A Duchess of Hell, now.” He sighs. “Her role is to lead your soul to the Pit, so that you may be the Prince of Hell.”

Luca buries his head in his hands where he’s sitting on the floor. A sour taste rises in Dragos’s throat.

“Jesus fucking Christ. What does that make me?”

“The angels are supposed to lead you to Heaven, and you’ll be the Voice of God. I’m not sure what happened to Metatron and Beelzebub, but—”

“Fucking fantastic. How do we stop it?”

An angel adopting a completely helpless look is just about the most worrying thing there is.

 

 

“He looks like that half the time, dumbass,” says Erzsébet. Both Dragos and Stefan himself glower at her. Nadzeya laughs hoarsely.

 

 

Summoning the Duchess of Hell is a bit of a disaster.

Oh, sure, she shows up in all her demonic Stepford wife-glory, but she’s unhelpful and rude and somehow nearly talks Tuomi into making a deal with her from her devil’s trap and Nadzeya has to knock him out before he does something colossally stupid. Luca, who watches from the back, is trembling with an emotion Dragos can’t identify, and Stefan threatening Lehiel with smiting doesn’t quite have the desired effect.

“Oh, honey,” she says, “I’m the best-case scenario. There are, I assure you, several other fallen angels with high ranks in Hell who would gladly rise to the occasion, and they’d be far less agreeable, see?”

Stefan closes his eyes and sighs, and they have to let her go.

 

 

One of the loyal angels Stefan mentioned shows up quickly after that, in the form of a pretty young woman with dark curls she keeps having to swipe out of her face.

“Brother, you must hide the Bălans,” she warns. “You’ve told them their roles. The archangels are angry. They’ll want to speed up the plans.”

“Oh, great,” Stefan says drily, which is so human that Dragos _has_ to laugh at it, because what else can he do?

 

 

They get on the road, with Stefan as protection, and Dragos doesn’t laugh when Luca steers a horde of demons away from where they are just a few weeks later, with his mind.

“I can’t turn it off, Dragos!” his brother yells when he confronts him. “It’s part of me! Why do you get to be all friendly with an angel and I don’t get to have anything? They hate me, Dra! They’d rather have me dead!”

“That’s not true! Right, Stefan?”

Stefan pulls a _face_ —he’s spent way too much time with Erzsébet—and Dragos wants to punch him in the nose.

“You’re not fucking helping.”

Before anyone can say anything else, Luca has slammed the door of the Dacia and is driving off with screeching tires.

“Sure!” Dragos yells after him. “Run away from it!”

“ _I_ don’t want him dead,” Stefan says, helpfully. “I want him to be happy.”

There are tears burning behind Dragos’s eyes and he bites his lip, hard.

“Me too, Stef. That’s all I’ve ever wanted.”

 

 

“Why exactly do they need me to be the Voice of God?” he asks, now walking to the next decent place for the night they can find, because Stefan might be strong, but he’s effectively been cut off from Heaven and can hardly fly anywhere, let alone take Dragos along. Dragos wasn’t aware that was something he could do in the first place, and wonders if the angel has ever flown Erzsébet anywhere. He shakes the thought off.

“Oh,” says Stefan, “the Voice is needed to announce the Apocalypse. Without one, it won’t come to pass.”

And _that_ is the opposite of what Dragos needed to hear.

 

 

They spend a considerable amount of time in the small town where they end up, in the Lake Valley, cut off from the outside world. If Luca comes back, he’ll be able to find them, although Dragos isn’t holding out too much hope for that. He also tries not to look for cases. Tries not to think about his brother at all.

Instead, he teaches Stefan about humanity, which includes movies that the people at Sadık’s house haven’t shown him yet, and sleight of hand tricks he picked up as a kid at the children’s home, fascinated by how entranced the angel seems by human inventiveness. It’s kind of adorable, really. All those millennia, he barely got out of Heaven, where everything is ordered and rigid, and human lives are nothing like that.

Stefan spends the rest of his time reading every book from the local library and eating all the varieties of yoghurt there are at the store in town. Dragos is kind of impressed, especially when it turns out he’s keeping some kind of spreadsheet on a piece of paper in the pocket of his coat.

 

 

Playing house with an angel in a shitty motel room and trying to teach him about Excel is not how Dragos imagined spending his 31st birthday. It still manages to be one of his better ones.

 

 

In January, there are actual Biblical plagues happening on an island in one of the lakes, and it’s impossible to ignore the news.

Luckily, Stefan just seems relieved at the prospect of smiting something again, so they go. It was fun while it lasted, for a relative definition of the term.

 

 

Maybe they should have expected the other angels. Expected it to be a trap.

Dragos is still cursing his stupidity when Erzsébet and Nadzeya show up for the same reason he was there.

“Where’s your brother and the angel?” the latter asks.

“Gone.”

Erzsébet blanches.

“Not _gone_ gone,” he clarifies, weary. He tugs at an earlobe. “At least I hope so.”

“Just another day in the life, huh?” Nadzeya asks, and even she flinches when he glares at her.

 

 

They’re back at Sadık’s house, which has been converted into some sort of base for hunters the way Iryna’s bar used to be. Iryna herself is there as well, still warm as ever, though a little more frayed around the edges. Tuomi is manning the phones as Eduard used to do.

Dragos nearly forgot that there are still vampires and ghouls and shapeshifters on the loose.

“No,” Erzsébet says. “You’re not going hunting. You’re a mess, Bălan. You need to find your brother and your angel, and we need to stop this all before it gets you killed.”

He never thought he'd say it, but he really appreciates her in that moment.

 

 

What he doesn’t tell her is that he’s been praying to Stefan every day. Or that the angel’s dumb coat, which he gave to Dragos on the island, is stuffed into his bag, yoghurt spreadsheet and all. That’s no one’s business but his own.

 

 

Luca isn’t terribly hard to find, in the end. Dragos knows the guy can hide better than that—he taught him himself—so he tries to ease his worried mind by assuring himself that his brother must have wanted to be found and that’s why he’s having a bunch of demons make all that ruckus down in Westmoor.

Of course, the question is by whom.

At least it’s just Luca, no Lehiel or anyone else in sight. That doesn’t mean Dragos isn’t upset. He is not proud of some of the things he says to his little brother.

 

 

“I have to, Dra. I’m the only one with the power to take her out who actually wants to do it. I have to practice.”

 

 

He has a point, as Einar points out, but it’s a terrifying point that could get him killed, and Dragos would rather die again himself than let that happen.

He refuses to let Luca out of his sight, as if they’re kids again and each other is all they’ve got in their mother’s absence. While she’s hunting down demons. There’s so much they still don’t know. So much they’ll probably never find out.

It’s scary to see Luca like this. His grey eyes darken when he exercises his powers. Not to the all-black of regular demons, thank God, but something resembling it.

“Hey, Stefan,” Dragos prays into the darkness of the field, “why don’t I get any cool powers? Isn’t that stupid?”

With a sigh, he shifts on top of the Dacia—he’s glad to have it back.

“I miss you, Stef. You better be alive up there, or I’ll… I don’t know. Someone could probably kick your ass for me in Heaven. Kveta seems the type.”

Looking up at the stars, he tries to imagine what Heaven is really like. Angels are, after all, not much like he learned at church, so why would Heaven be? Stefan never speaks overly fondly of his home. Not for the first time, Dragos wishes he could remember the other angel’s name, the girl with the curly hair and the summer dress that she’d undoubtedly still be wearing in the middle of the winter, so he could pray to her, ask her where Stefan is.

 

 

“You miss him,” Luca says, with the tiniest hint of that patented little brother obnoxiousness that would accompany late-night chants of ‘Dragos and such-and-such, sittin’ in a tree…’

“I do,” Dragos says, and he doesn’t care that he starts crying after that. He really doesn’t.

 

 

Einar, whom he still barely knows but who is still at Sadık’s house nonetheless, because he _is_ a great hunter, says, “What do ya mean ya don’t know her name?”

He’s done research, he explains, found out who is under Mendrion’s direct command. She was Anapion. Dragos can’t shoot off a prayer fast enough.

She shows almost immediately, as if she’d been waiting for it, indeed still in the blue dress but with her hair tied back with a red ribbon.

“You must help me,” she says frantically, just as Dragos is about to say the same to her.

“ _Me_ , help—”

“Stefan is being tortured. You can help him. You’re the destined Voice of God.”

Dragos stopped listening after ‘Stefan is being tortured’, so he just says, “Take me there.”

 

 

Dragos Bălan dies for the second time when he’s 31, with an anxious angel, his brother, and a woman who’s supposed to hate him hovering next to him.

“You better not shit yourself, Bălan,” Erzsébet says. “And you better come back. I’m not cleaning up your mess.”

He sticks his tongue out at her. Anapion—“you can call me Ana”—shifts her weight.

“Seek out Memsiel and Pendroz in Heaven,” she instructs again. “But hurry. I can’t keep your soul tethered to your body forever.”

Dragos tries not to think about that too much, smiles at Luca, and closes his eyes.

 

 

Heaven looks an awful lot like Iryna’s bar, is his first thought, and then he starts when a barstool clatters to the ground as the man who was sitting on it at the end of the bar jumps up.

“Dragos!” he exclaims. “God, not you too.”

Dragos rubs his eyes. “ _Eduard_?”

“Yeah!” He grins, looking exactly like he did the last time Dragos saw him, glasses, awkward bowl cut, and friendly sea-green eyes, but then he sobers. “So you kicked it again?”

"I—no—what? I’m really confused right now. Where am I?”

“Heaven, Dragos,” Eduard says gently. “You’re dead.”

“I know, technically. Why does Heaven look like Iryna’s bar?”

“Oh. Well, it turns out every soul generates their own piece of Heaven. This is mine.” He smiles. “But it got boring after a while, so I figured out a way to connect to other people.”

“Other—”

The door swings open, and Kveta is there, grinning like she did when she was alive.

“Oh!” She halts. “Oh, no, I really hoped it’d be some time before anyone else—”

“I’m not actually dead!” Dragos interrupts. He can’t allow himself to get lost in this. “Well, I mean, I am, but I’ll be coming back to life.”

“Aw, again?” Eduard says. “Why don’t we get to do that?”

Kveta tilts her head at Dragos, her short hair falling into her eyes. Her eyeliner is as sharp as it ever was.

“I’m sure it’s not for want of hoping.”

 He swallows. “Yeah. Erzsébet and Nadzeya… Well. Eduard, can you also contact angels?”

“Theoretically.” He cracks his knuckles, pushes his glasses up, and turns to his laptop. “But I assume this isn’t a theoretical question. Who am I calling?”

 

 

Waiting for Memsiel and Pendroz seems to take an age and yet no time at all, because Kveta is asking all kinds of questions that Sadık hasn’t yet answered when he showed up in Heaven, and Dragos wants to tell her everything, wants to stay here, see how Søren is, but he also _has_ to get to Stefan.

 

 

Eventually, the angels show. A tall, handsome man and a tiny woman decked out in various shades of pink.

“Dragos Bălan,” says the man.

“Yeah, that’s—” Before he can finish speaking, the angel is dragging him up from his seat by his arm.

“We’ve got to hurry,” he says.

The female angel says, “ _Pendroz_ ,” almost accusingly, but doesn’t refute him, and he doesn’t let go, so Dragos can only wave at Kveta and Eduard while he’s dragged out to the door, and into white nothingness.

Ah, that’s more like Heaven as he imagined it. He liked the bar better.

 

 

Memsiel may be small, but she’s obviously in charge of the operation, even though Pendroz is the one still tugging Dragos along through the white.

Sometimes, he thinks he can see a glimpse of something, a garden or a house, like a fata morgana in the desert, but it’s always gone before it comes into focus. Those flashes are the only indication they’re actually moving at all, and not just floating aimlessly through the dreamlike fog.

“What am I supposed to do?” he asks Pendroz, who turns a gaze on him that’s just as unearthly green as Stefan’s, if lighter. Dragos’s heart pangs.

“You’ll know.”

 _I don’t_ , he thinks. _Please help me._

 

 

He doesn’t know if the angels see the same thing he does, or if they see each other’s true forms, whatever those are, but what he sees will give him as many nightmares as Hell has.

Stefan is strapped to some sort of overgrown dentist chair in a sterile white space, and both blue light and blood is leaking from numerous wounds all over his body, his black turtleneck ripped. He’s breathing, but barely.

Mendrion himself is standing over him, holding his angel blade, but he snaps up to look at Dragos and the angels when they enter the not-quite-a-room. Stefan focuses hazy eyes on Dragos, who feels sick.

“What is this?” Mendrion snaps.

Memsiel angles her small form in front of Dragos and looks up at her superior.

“We follow you no longer, brother, and neither will Dragos Bălan. Let Stefan go.”

Mendrion laughs hollowly, and draws a line across Stefan’s cheek with his blade. Stefan grinds his teeth, chest heaving, and Dragos is only prevented from lunging at Mendrion by the fact that Pendroz is still holding him.

“Who will you follow, then? This traitor? The human?”

“Dragos Bălan is the Voice of our Father, Mendrion,” Memsiel says. There it is again. That title that means nothing to him. Mendrion must see the conflict in his eyes, or read it in his soul, because he lifts his angular chin and looks down at them all.

“Our Father could speak for Himself, if He weren’t long gone.”

“Sounds an awful lot like a fallen angel talking,” Pendroz comments, too casually, and apparently that’s the last straw for Mendrion.

When he charges at them, eyes again blazing, Pendroz lets Dragos go.

“Get him,” he says, and shoves him out of the way. Towards Stefan.

 

 

Angel fights are a lot like human fights, at least from Dragos’s perspective, except superpowered and with fucking teleporting. Being stuck in the middle of either is horrible.

 

 

More and more angels amass, both those for and against Mendrion, and the latter do their best to keep the former away from Stefan. Away from Dragos, who reaches the chair and tugs helplessly at the straps binding Stefan to it, eyes burning.

The angel’s breathing is ragged, and he doesn’t notice Dragos until Dragos tries to press his shirt to one of the larger wounds.

“You do have powers, Dragos,” he croaks, grasping his wrist with hands bleeding red and blue.

“I don’t, I fucking don’t, I’m just—fuck, Stefan, don’t die on me, man. You’re the only one I trust to help me fix this. Please.”

“You can fix this,” he insists, the words slurred but his gaze steady when Dragos looks up into his eyes.

The sounds of the battle still raging fade until there’s just Stefan’s heartbeat, or the rhythm of his grace, beating under Dragos’s blood-soaked fingers. He presses his free hand to the angel’s forehead.

“You’re the Voice,” Stefan says, “the Scribe. You command everything, Dragos Bălan.”

He doesn’t care about everything. He just cares about this, about getting Stefan out alive, getting back to earth. Stopping this, He just wants to be Dragos.

“ _What is going on_?” Mendrion screams.

A light fills up the space, and Pendroz looks elated. Memsiel is prone on the ground.

There is a warmth in Dragos that feels good and claustrophobic at the same time, soothing and pressing, in and out.

“Yeah!” Pendroz enthuses. Stefan sighs, and for a second, Dragos sees everything. The shape of Heaven, the past and the present and all the possible futures, his own soul, and Stefan’s true form in all its colors, with all its abrasions, and it’s all terrifying.

He just wants to be Dragos.

 

 

He wakes on the bed where he died with a gasp of Stefan’s name.

 

 

Three days later, he receives a text message from an unknown number.

_Dragos, I’m in Retea. I told you that you command everything. Stefan_

“What?” he whispers, and then he dives into his car and drives across the entire country in less than a day, because it _has_ to be the angel. His angel. No one else would know this.

 

 

He only realizes it could very well have been a trap when he’s already halfway back to Mera with an exhausted, more human than angel, but _alive_ , Stefan in the passenger seat. By then, he has decided that it’s worth the earful he’s going to get.

 

 

The drive back takes longer, and Dragos pretends for a while that everything is peaceful as he lies on top of the Dacia and watches the stars. He thinks Stefan is sleeping—although he tries not to think too hard on that, because _angels don’t sleep_ —until he hears the car door open. Looking down, he catches the familiar green gaze.

The smaller cuts on Stefan’s face have healed, but the large abrasions remain to remind Dragos of what he’s been through.

“How do you feel?” he asks, sitting up and folding his legs. Stefan frowns, apparently cataloguing the body that wasn’t always his, though it was given willingly to him by the soul who originally inhabited it. Angels aren’t like demons in that respect.

“I feel better,” he eventually replies.

The angel hasn’t said much since Dragos found him in Retea, rented him a motel room and made him take a shower and borrow his clothes after cleaning the wounds best he could. He looks strange out of the black turtleneck, in the short sleeves of Dragos’s spare shirt. For the first time, Dragos notices he’s got _tattoos_. He traces the black lines on his forearms with interest, but when he sees goosebumps rising, he wrenches his gaze away and pushes off the car, remembering something.

Stefan makes an inquiring noise.

“I’ve got…” He opens the trunk and digs around in his bag. “Yeah!”

Triumphantly, Dragos unearths Stefan’s coat, the green fabric soft between his fingers. The angel just _looks_ , and Dragos realizes he must find it weird, to be so attached to a piece of clothing that Dragos would have kept it. He’s just a wavelength or a pillar of light or something, after all; surely, he doesn’t care about the coat. His fingers tighten.

“I… I mean, you look cold, and I’ve…” He swallows, starts to put the coat down, but then Stefan is in his space, ozone and rain and off-brand motel shampoo, with his own pale hands folding into the coat. His eyes seem greener in the glow that reflects from the car’s interior lights, and his eyelashes cast long shadows.

“Thank you, Dragos.”

“Well, you know, it’s the least I could—”

Stefan slides cold fingers over Dragos’s.

”Thank you for everything.”

He nods breathlessly.

 

 

There is no way anything Dragos does can ever measure up to the amount of gratitude he feels for Stefan, because the guy did not only pull him out of Hell, he also defied all his superiors, lost so much, for humanity. For Dragos.

 

 

“Oh, my spreadsheet!” the angel says happily, and Dragos loves him so much.

 

 

They come back to a chorus of excited ‘Stefan’s, and Dragos watches with faint amusement while Iryna fusses over the angel and Erzsébet hovers.

“I’m back too, you know,” he mumbles, and next to him, Luca laughs. The sound warms his heart.

“Yeah, well, you know what they say, Dra. The bad penny always turns up.”

That makes Dragos laugh as well.

 

 

It doesn’t last long, because nothing good ever does.

It’s the middle of the summer when Anapion and Pendroz show up with a third, wounded angel in tow, a young man—a teenager, really—that Iryna immediately takes a shine to. The angels fawn over Stefan like he’s a baby… Angel. Fledgling? Dragos shakes that thought off.

“Brother,” says Anapion, putting both her hands on his face and tilting it this way and that while Pendroz squints at him, “have you Fallen?”

“Not exactly,” Stefan replies, letting her be. He blinks when Pendroz pokes his cheek.

“You feel human.”

“I am still an angel, but Mendrion weakened me. In time, I should regain my strength.”

Anapion straightens. “I don’t think time is something we have.”

 

 

Everyone gathers in Sadık’s living room. Dragos, Luca and Stefan cram themselves on the loveseat while Einar perches on its armrest. Nadzeya sits in a chair, Erzsébet leans against the backrest, and Iryna, Ivan and Tuomi sit on the couch with the new angel, Razziel. Pendroz and Anapion stand like leaders of an army in front of the TV to explain everything, and the gravitas of the situation is the only thing preventing Dragos from laughing at how they’re both dressed for the beach, not for battle, flip-flops and boards shorts and all.

“Mendrion is set on leading the forces of Heaven into battle against those of Hell,” Pendroz starts. “He wants to start the Apocalypse and bring Paradise, but he needs the Voice of God to announce the start.”

Light green eyes swivel to Dragos, who tries to sink into the loveseat until Stefan puts a hand on his arm. He squares his jaw.

“Yeah, well. This Voice of God isn’t announcing anything.”

“Good. We don’t want you to. The battle would destroy the earth one way or another, and I’ve only just started discovering how interesting it is. Especially humanity.”

“Right?” says Anapion, dark eyes glittering. “It’s really Father’s best creation. If you tell a human something is dangerous, they’ll find a way around it, and they’ve learned so much, they’re constantly changing. Angels don’t do that.”

“And they’re so good at inventing things!” Pendroz adds enthusiastically. “There’s so much food, and—”

Erzsébet snaps her fingers. “Can you two focus?”

Amused, Dragos shares a look with his brother, who seems to be swallowing laughter. Anapion clears her throat.

“My apologies. Our point is that we don’t want your world to be destroyed, but Mendrion doesn’t care as long as he can bring Paradise to it. Many angels follow him, even our own garrison. Memsiel and Razziel are—were—the only ones of that group still on our side. There are many more, luckily, and they’ve pledged their loyalty to Stefan.”

“So what do we do?” Ivan asks.

“Mendrion has teamed up with Lehiel, the Duchess of Hell, to coerce the Bălan brothers into their roles.”

Luca tenses. Stefan’s fingers clench on Dragos’s arm.

“It won’t be long before they and theirs arrive here,” Anapion continues. “The only thing we can do is take a stand and keep the Bălans safe.”

“We’ve got one advantage,” says Pendroz, quirking one bushy eyebrow. “We’ve got help from Heaven.”

“So does Mendrion,” Stefan starts, and the other angel grins.

“Yes, there are angels on both sides, but more importantly, we’ve got the full support of the network created by Eduard Mets.”

“ _Eduard_?” Tuomi and Nadzeya chorus, and, _fuck_ , how could Dragos have forgotten to mention his little sojourn to the Heavenly version of Iryna’s bar?

“Yes,” Pendroz says, obliviously, “he and Kveta Horaková have rounded up multiple hunters, who will surely be a great help in keeping hostile angels back, which… Why are you all staring at me like that?”

 

 

Luckily, no one has the time to be upset with him _or_ Dragos in the whirlwind of preparations that follows.

 

 

It wouldn’t be so hard to tolerate if Dragos felt like he could actually _do_ something.

However, his and Luca’s parts in the plan that’s formulated consist of staying in the fucking panic room while everyone risks their lives for them. He understands, he really does, but he hates it and knows Luca feels the same.

For so long, all they had was each other, and now so many people are willing to stand beside them, but they could lose them all in one fell swoop.

Dragos tosses and turns that evening, on the cot already in the panic room because Mendrion and Lehiel could be here any moment; Stefan and the other angels are keeping watch.

“I’m sure it’s not supposed to be like this,” Luca says, à propos of nothing. Dragos can vaguely see his profile in the gloom. The familiar crook of his nose, same as his own, his thin arms as he sits up on the other side of the small space and leans back. There is a lump in Dragos’s throat that makes it hard to swallow.

“Hey, Luc?”

“Hm?” A shadow of long hair falls over his shoulders when he turns to Dragos.

“I’m sorry.” A pause.

“For what, Dra?”

He shrugs, although his brother won’t see it. _For abandoning you all those years ago, for dying and driving you to a demon, for not being a better person, for not being able to protect you from what the world wants from you_.

“Everything?”

Luca sighs and lets himself fall back down. Dragos bites the inside of his lip hard and pretends his cheeks aren’t wet.

“Me too,” Luca says.

 

 

The forces of Heaven and Hell arrive in the middle of the night, because of course they do.

 

 

“Dragos, Luca,” Stefan says, rushing into the room. Dragos hopes there’s been a change of plans, that he can leave, he can _help_ , but Einar is waiting by the door, as silent and unflappable as ever, and Stefan just stares at the brothers for a moment.

“ _What_?” Luca snaps, then clenches his hands into fists.

“They’re here,” Stefan says unnecessarily. “I just… I wanted to thank you. Both. For everything. For showing me humanity. And yoghurt.”

Dragos blinks.

“I didn’t mean to say that. I feel strange.”

“You’re just nervous,” Dragos says. After a second’s hesitation, he reaches out and clasps Stefan’s hands between his own. The angel looks down, then up at his face. Tangles their fingers together.

“Angels don’t get nervous.”

“Guess you’re special, Stef.”

He takes a deep breath as if preparing to say something, but Dragos shakes his head. He can’t deal with even more right now.

“Come back, alright? Make it through.”

Stefan inclines his head. “I’ll try.”

He nods at Luca, and his warmth lingers much too short after he silently leaves.

Einar, with a hand on the heavy iron door, looks through his lashes at Dragos, who shoves his hands into the pockets of his worn-out jeans.

“You’re the Voice,” the man says.

“Thanks, I hadn’t noticed.”

“That means you command everything, Dragos. It’s worth some thought.”

With that, he shuts the door, the locks sliding into place from the outside.

“Fucking great,” Dragos mumbles.

 

 

Being in here is torture, and Dragos has been to Hell; he knows what that means. He’s climbing the walls within the first hour of trying to, then trying very hard not to, imagine what’s going on out there.

Luca seems to be considering using his powers to knock himself out, his eyes constantly shifting from black to grey.

Torture.

 

 

Two hours in, and Dragos can’t take it anymore. There were noises through the walls every once in a while, at first, but it’s gone eerily silent now.

“Luc, this doesn’t make sense!” he exclaims, slamming his palm flat against the echoing wall. “We’re supposed to be the—the be-all, end-all of this fucking circus and we’re trapped! In! A! Cell!”

Luca, who was pretending to be asleep, sits up and winds his hair around his wrist, tugging on it.

“There has to be something we can do,” Dragos says.

“I don’t know if there is,” Luca says, morosely. Dragos wants to cry for the optimistic child his brother used to be, even after everything, and how little of that there is left these days. Taken away by fucking Lehiel and Mendrion, some prophecy they don’t even know the real meaning of, a God who’s probably gone forever.

Instead, he just pushes at the door, knowing it’s useless.

“They want us to cause the end of the world, Dra.”

“Well, I don’t want the end of the world,” Dragos says, “and that should count for something, because I’m one of the people who live in it. We’re not a battleground for angels and demons. They don’t control us.”

Luca stands up, pushes his hair behind his ears. There’s a frown on his face, as if he’s thinking about something. Dragos raises his eyebrows. His brother is smart, smarter than he is. Maybe he knows something.

“According to ‘what’s written’,” he starts slowly, tone considering, “you’re the Voice of God, right? And I’m… I’m the Prince of Hell?”

“Apparently.”

“But we don’t know what that _means_ , exactly. We don’t know what else it says. Who says—who says if we take on those roles we immediately start the Apocalypse? When do _we_ ever do what is expected of us?”

Breathless, Dragos looks up at his little brother. His eyes are bright, more blue than grey in the meager light.

“Who says we can’t be the ones to stop all of this?”

“And if we aren’t? If we can’t?”

Luca squares his jaw. “We die trying, and then we try harder.”

 

 

They’re still stuck in the cell, though. Dragos kicks the door, hard.

His toes stop hurting abruptly after he sarcastically tells them to do just that, as he’s wont to.

 

 

Turns out Einar was right. Luca may command demons, but Dragos commands _everything_ , or at least the many locks on the panic room door.

 

 

“Hey, Luc,” Dragos says, before they step out of the back door of Sadık’s house and into the early morning gloom of the field behind it.

Luca looks back at him with rapidly darkening eyes.

“I love you, you know that, right?”

He smiles, and his eyes are light when he does.

“I do. I love you too.”

They burst outside.

 

 

It’s almost anticlimactic.

Almost, because Luca and Lehiel are engaged in some sort of mental battle, with her true form raging around him like a hurricane, but Dragos doesn’t even have time to be terrified, because the lesser angels following Mendrion may have listened when he pulled that stifling warmth up from somewhere in himself and commanded them to stand down and leave the earth alone, but Mendrion himself is evidently not impressed.

Even—or maybe especially—with his scarf ripped, trailing behind like tattered wings, the angel strikes an imposing figure.

Commanding everything sadly doesn’t include the actual will of beings. Dragos supposes that’s the difference between the Voice of God and the Prince of Hell.

“You pretend to speak my Father’s words,” Mendrion says. His deep voice carries well. Behind him, Dragos can see nearly all of his friends among the remaining angels and their fallen brethren, wounded but alive. Stefan and Einar aren’t there. He tries not to panic. Now isn’t the time.

“I speak my own words,” he says. “That’s what humans do, you penguin fart.”

“Yeah!” someone yells faintly. It may be Erzsébet, or Pendroz.

“Humanity is weak,” Mendrion says. “You have no true purpose, no respect for your creator, or for each other.”

He draws his blade, already streaked with blood, and Dragos bites his lip so hard it starts bleeding. Still, he doesn’t let himself move from his spot in the grass.

“There’s a difference between respect and love.”

“You don’t know anything, Dragos Bălan,” Mendrion spits, and he charges.

Dragos braces himself, frantically trying to command _anything_ , but then, Stefan is there, blood-soaked but holding his angel blade and with green eyes afire.

It’s true, in that moment, that Dragos doesn’t know anything, except for the fear gripping his heart like a vice.

“No!” he screams, failing to put any trace of command into his voice. There’s just desperation while the two angels fight, with flashes of light that hurt to watch.

“Stefan!” It’s useless, he can’t do anything. They’re moving too fast, and even with everything, he’s still just human. The world could be falling apart all around and Dragos wouldn’t have noticed.

 

 

Moments before dawn, Mendrion stabs Stefan from behind, both their gazes locked on Dragos.

Stefan opens his eyes wide, twitching in Mendrion’s grip, choking when he pulls his blade out.

“is _this_ love, Dragos Bălan?” Mendrion asks, smiling sardonically. “Do you know _that_? Angels don’t know love. Not for lowly beings like you.”

When he lets go of Stefan, the angel crumples to the ground, still gasping for air. Blue light spills from his wounds, slipping through the fingers he tries to press to them.

“Pathetic. You don’t deserve Paradise.”

With a high-pitched scream, Lehiel vanishes on the other side of the field. He rolls his eyes. Stefan gurgles when his superior looks down at him.

“Stop,” Dragos says. It doesn’t sound like a command, but a plea, and still Mendrion is suddenly rooted to the spot, his eyes widening.

Dragos walks over to him as if entranced, breathing through his teeth. His whole body is strung tight, and he doesn’t even care that Mendrion is still holding his blade, because he picks up Stefan’s and grips it tight, his hand immediately slippery with blood.

There is fear in Mendrion’s eyes, and they’re the wrong shade of green altogether.

“I know more than enough,” Dragos says, and seconds later, the angel falls, the angel blade buried deep in his chest, and the ashen imprint of wings spreads out on the ground as he flares out.

 

 

Where _do_ angels go when they die?

 

 

Dragos crumples to the ground himself, kneeling at Stefan’s side. He can’t command him to stay alive, can’t command time to rewind itself. He can only try to put pressure on one of the angel’s wounds, but his hands are shaking and his vision blurry with tears.

Stefan puts his own hand on top of his. It’s cold. It’s not supposed to be cold.

“You’re a good man, Dragos Bălan,” he whispers. “It’s been an honor.”

“No, no,” Dragos mumbles. “No, Stef, come on, there’s—I should’ve—”

With obvious difficulty, Stefan blinks, his eyes unfocused for a long second while his eyelashes clump together. His fingers are clenching and unclenching weakly, his breathing irregular and labored, blood on his lips.

“Don’t,” Dragos pleads. What use is all of this if Stefan dies? “I don’t know what I’d do, Stef.”

A smile.

Stefan’s eyes light up violent light blue, and everything ends.

 

 

There’s much yelling from the other side of the field, but no one comes over while Dragos sits with his head bowed, letting his hair curtain him off from the rest of the world. He can hear Luca.

So the world is still there. But at what cost?

 

 

He doesn’t notice that Einar is there until the man is kneeling by Stefan’s head, somehow looking just as put-together as ever, his pale hair glinting painfully in the first sunrays.

“You’ve done well, Dragos,” he says. His voice seems even deeper than its usual unexpected timbre through the pressure on Dragos’s ears.

“Well?” he asks. His voice feels strange. “You call this well?”

Einar tilts his head. Puts his long fingers on Stefan’s forehead with an unreadable expression.

“Humanity finds a way,” he says wonderingly, and then he stands up.

Dragos wants to shout after him as he walks off, wants to curse for no other reason than to curse, but in the next second, Stefan starts coughing violently, sitting bolt upright.

His eyes are wide open, and he looks at Dragos as he takes deep breaths for a few seconds, then turns abruptly.

“ _Father_?” he yells after Einar, but in the space of one blink, the man has vanished, leaving just the blinding sunrise.

“Okay, what the _fuck_?” Dragos says, except it doesn’t really matter because Stefan is _alive_ , he’s whole and healthy and Mendrion and Lehiel are still dead, and who cares if Einar is God or Satan or some random weird guy.

“We did it,” Stefan breathes.

“Yeah. We fucking did.”

Stefan grasps his face. His hands fit perfectly around the sharp cut of Dragos’s jaw, like they belong there, and somehow, he still smells like ozone and rain and spicy perfume—thanks, Einar.

“Mendrion was wrong,” he says, his forehead touching Dragos’s. There’s no trace of any of his wounds on it, even if it’s still caked in grime. That doesn’t matter.

“Well, yeah.”

“I do love you.”

Dragos hiccups a laugh through tears, and when he kisses Stefan after all this time, _finally_ has a salty taste to it. But he’ll have plenty of time to make up for that. This is why he needed to survive.

 

 

Einar, who never does return after performing a miracle like it was nothing, didn’t bring Stefan back as an angel, though.

 _Humanity finds a way_ , he said, and Dragos thinks that must have been a hint, because Stefan is as human as he is now—which is to say, fully, because apparently, the need for God to have a Voice is over.

It takes some time, sure, but Stefan knows humanity, and being part of it suits him. Moreover, Dragos gets to keep him around.

 

 

There are still werewolves, fairies, and witches to hunt down, but Luca begs out and goes back to school, where he starts drawing on his crazy life to write stories that become quite successful. Dragos doesn’t read any of them, afraid of what they might dredge up, but Luca doesn’t mind, and he’s proud anyway.

Stefan hunts with him now, and maybe one day, there’ll be a new Lehiel and Mendrion, another Apocalypse attempt, but for now, even with the occasional trips to Heaven with Pendroz, Anapion or Razziel, the fact that Erzsébet is apparently one of his best friends, and Stefan getting the fucking talk from Nadzeya and Iryna, life is peaceful.

 

 

Wait, so is God his father-in-law? Christmas dinner is going to be _fun_.

**Author's Note:**

> also ft angel/demon cameos:  
> Mendrion - Netherlands  
> Lehiel - Belgium  
> Anapion - Seychelles  
> Pendroz - Australia  
> Memsiel - Taiwan  
> Razziel - Latvia
> 
> I'm so glad to have gotten to use my angel name dictionary for something :P


End file.
